


i can't sleep, but i can dream of us

by thecourageofstars



Category: Emerald City (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, ec drabbles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-20 18:08:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11340642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecourageofstars/pseuds/thecourageofstars
Summary: Though Glinda may resent it, there are some things no magic can suppress.





	i can't sleep, but i can dream of us

Roan falls asleep the moment his head hits the pillow.

 

He’s back at the meadow, the farm house in the distance, watching Sylvie play with Toto and some young girls he doesn’t recognize, Dorothy comfortably ensconced in his arms. The sun is warm, the breeze light, and the grass cool beneath him.

 

Dorothy smells intoxicating, like hot sunshine, honey and lavender.

 

“What are you thinking about?” she whispers, caressing his throat with her hand. He smiles and tangles their fingers together. Her hands are softer than his, but strong and wiry.

 

“I’m happy,” he tells her and presses a kiss into her hair, inhaling the scent of her.

 

He watches her smile, blissful, feeling a heady sort of pleasure rush through his blood. She turns and uses his shoulders to lift herself so she’s sitting in his lap and runs her hands through his short hair. The feeling sends a tingling feeling down his spine and he wraps his arms around her so she’s pressed into his chest.

 

He kisses her hotly, mouth gliding against hers and hands pressing into her back and tangling in her dark curls before moving to press her into the grass.

 

Dorothy gazes up at him with molten eyes (she’s beautiful, so beautiful, especially so in the fading sunlight) and when he bends to press an open mouth kiss to her neck, she giggles.

 

“Maybe not best to do this where our girls can see us.”

 

The wording of ‘our girls’ sends an odd thrill through him, but it hardly seems to matter with Dorothy smiling up at him with such joy. He’s never seen her this happy, this teasing. Her eyes are impossibly warm, and when she caresses his face, her touch is sweet and tender. He leans into her hand, pressing a kiss to her palm.

 

“I love you,” she says softly, and he smiles broadly.

 

“Dorothy,” he rumbles and it sounds an awful lot like ‘I love you too.’

 

He leans in to kiss her again, closing his eyes.

 

When he opens them, he is sprawled across Glinda’s bed. Moonlight spills through the arching window and-

 

Heedless of anything else, he closes his eyes again and tries go back to the meadow, to hear the laughter of children, the feel of Dorothy pressed to his chest, her smile against his throat, but nothing comes. There is just an echo of guilt and anger that's defined the past day that rattles dangerously in his chest and makes him shift uncomfortably on the bed. Longing presses into his chest like a bruise. Next to him, Glinda lays motionless, but Roan suspects that she is awake and merely biding her time until she decides to confront him. A part of him aches to close his eyes and escape back to Dorothy and the meadow but Roan is more pragmatic than Lucas. Instead he sits up and holds his head in his hands.

 

“You talk in your sleep you know.”

 

Ah. There it was.

 

“I’ve never heard you complain before.”

 

The moment the words leave his mouth, he realizes why she brought it up.

 

“I’ve never had cause to complain.”

 

She sounds annoyed and dangerous. Roan can’t say he blames her. Saying another woman’s name in bed is hardly something to brush over, unlike, say, him forgetting to wipe the mud from his boots before entering her castle.

 

Absentmindedly, he lays a hand across the wound from Nimbo. It’s still tender, but Dorothy had declared it as “healing nicely” when they were at the farm house.

 

The realization swells without preamble and washes over him, but he feels no surprise.

 

(“I’m sorry Dorothy. But they came first.”)

 

He meant them at the time, but now they feel like a sham. Wishes he could take them back. Wishes he could tell her that he understands why she wanted to go back to Kansas so badly now that his world is bigger than her, Sylvie and Toto. No, he won’t abandon Glinda or her girls, but he’ll never look at Glinda the same again. Won’t feel the same about her again. If he could, he wouldn’t have had a dream about rolling around in a meadow with Dorothy while their (their!) children played nearby. 

 

Glinda has never been able to read thoughts, but she senses the feelings that Roan’s thoughts evoke and quietly, she begins to seethe.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Gravity, by EDEN


End file.
